I have pinpointed why I dislike the animations in this game. They are not awesome like the 2D animations from the GBA games. Sad.

Yeah, the flashy and over the top animations of the 2D GBA games were awesome. Now we just get generic slashes and pokes most of the time. I still like the new graphics though (the feet thing never really bothered me).

I have pinpointed why I dislike the animations in this game. They are not awesome like the 2D animations from the GBA games. Sad.

Yeah, the flashy and over the top animations of the 2D GBA games were awesome. Now we just get generic slashes and pokes most of the time. I still like the new graphics though (the feet thing never really bothered me).

2....D...??? Geez! Bygone age!! :P

Naw, I'm kidding. I'm also sad that Capcom is all hot shit now so we'll never see their amazing 2D artwork ever again.

I do like the 2D in GBA fire emblem, but I do like when a pegasus knight charges head first at an enemy when another unit follows up with a spell or arrow to their ass. I think it's cool you can change how you view the battle straight on, dynamic, or even in a first person view too.

Posting the rest in Code in the unlikely events that both IS decides to remake FE4 (okay, that isn't so unlikely) and that NoA decides to localize it since I may be posting a major plot spoiler for the game or two.

Welp. Just got done with the DLC chapters this week and first things first. Ced? Really? Ced!? That's way too close to Ned Flanders to justify referring to the guy as Wind God Ced (and I can think of at least one SA goon who's going to be needing a user name change soon), plus it kinda defeats the whole purpose of being named after your home nation's holy weapon when you're not named after your nation's holy weapon (how does anyone get Ced out of Forseti). Also I can't help but to imagine an FFIX Qu leading the bulk of a nation's cavalry based army into a desert to suck and die in a scripted one sided slaughter (along with his idiot wife and child which would put the ambiguous Qu gender debate to bed), plus Cuan had a certain synergy going with Gaebolg.

On the other hand, the debate on which way to localize Nanna's mother's name has finally been settled on the middle ground of Racquesis instead of blatantly swiping a name from one of the three sisters of fate, Lachesis, or the somewhat ironically connotative name of Rackesis (in the sense that she infamously had a rather difficult time keeping it in her panties/bra). Also both of Ayra's kids now have pronounceable names.

The second grinding map's intro was amusing enough though.

Belated Edit: Forgot about the gem of Rolo being localized as Legion. You drive a hard bargain 8-4, but you win this round.

I just did the Golden Gaffe DLC and kinda felt like I cheated the game. I'm trying to reconcile with myself by saying that I'll only do the DLC once. Oh well, its not like I made a ton of money off of it anyway.

The grinding maps are definitely best kept til post game and preferably keeping it down until dealing with the second wave of DLC. Although its a lot easier to go through Golden Gaffe instead of having a pack of people pick up Despoil or Armsthrift and Leif's Blade. Especially if I want to afford all the Master and Second Seals I need for picking up everybody's available skill sets.

That said, the biggest reason why the third DLC pack should be gotten is that the second chapter is the one that nets you the Male DLC reclass item (and the second reason is that the third chapter nets you Paragon which is extremely useful for grinding people up in levels).

Okay, Armsthrift is WAY too overpowered. My MU has over 40 luck which means that his weapons basically can't break. Combine that with Sol/Luna and Lifetaker and you're basically invincible. In fact these skills are just ripe for serious abuse.

Awakening is the most easily trivialized FE in series history, on any difficulty level.

Meh, I broke the rest of the games in the series easily enough by abusing the RNG. It took a while to do it sometimes, but it was pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Also, Sacred Stones had the Tower and the Ruins that you could play over and over. In fact I abused the RNG in the Ruins to get a shitload of Boots so I could max out everyone's movements. For Awakening, IS just made the breakableness of the game obvious.

So I'm about forty hours into my game. I spent a lot of time getting all the units paired off when they showed up and have yielded some pretty kickass children so far. And I have no shame. I've been abusing the DLC like crazy. Mostly for supports, but also for money and weapons. Even in abusing the game there are still maps that pose challenges. Paralogue 6 being a great example. Even with S supports, and my second tier promoted units I had a hard time. There are a lot of enemies, they're all second tier, and they all have very powerful weapons. My units were about the same level as the enemies when I started the map, but the sheer volume of enemies all coming at once when you have very little room to maneuver made the chapter pretty challenging.

My only complaint is that the pacing of the story can suffer A LOT by doing sidequests, DLC, and fighting enemies on the map. I have to remind myself what is happening when I start a story chapter because I spend so much time elsewhere in between chapters that I forget what is happening in the main story. Where most of the previous games in the series were extremely linear (and I'm cool with that), this one seems to favor gameplay, customization, and side-content over the main story. I kind of see it as being Final Fantasy V as compared to Final Fantasy IV.

I just had a boss attack him. Boss's attack did 0 damage. Donnel countered and critted the boss for 165 damage.

Yes! Donnel has higher defense than Kellam in my game, but his resistance has always been lacking for me. Doesn't matter much though as he dodges most magical attacks that come his way with ease. I paired Donnel with Lissa, and their kid is nearly the beast that Donnel is. The kid's skill is through the roof and could promote to either Assassin or Swordmaster. Couldn't go wrong either way, but I chose Assassin because Lethality is fun. Chrom's kid is really powerful as well.

I have pinpointed why I dislike the animations in this game. They are not awesome like the 2D animations from the GBA games. Sad.

Yeah, the flashy and over the top animations of the 2D GBA games were awesome. Now we just get generic slashes and pokes most of the time. I still like the new graphics though (the feet thing never really bothered me).

Yea, the GBA animations were fantastic. The 3D (and kind of 3D in Shadow Dragon) really don't compare, though among the many things Radiant Dawn got wrong, the animations for some of the attack skills were pretty fun. Lethality is kind of a fun animation to watch in Awakening, but still not as awesome as giant, muscly Warriors pirouetting their axe into an enemies head.

Abusing the RNG is pretty simple. It's the basic system that determines pretty much everything that occurs in gameplay. A random number is generated (RNG), and when you go into battle that random number determines your whether or not your attack hits, misses, or if you have a critical. Say you have a 15% chance of scoring a critical. If the RNG is a number less than 15 or less, you score a critical. A new number is generated after each attack. The RNG also controls which stats increase at level up and so on.

It does take some practice to get the hang of it. All you have to do is select an available unit to move and twist the movement arrow around them. The game uses an RN to choose how the movement arrow will point when it resets. Best to use a unit with high movement to do it. That way you can predict, to an extent, what the RN is and abuse it. This video explains better than I can though. Be sure to read the text in the info for a more detailed explanation:

And since Fire Emblem grades you on number of turns rather than time, it doesn't affect the scoring for those games in the series that keep track of things like that. It's very easy to do in the GBA games, but it works in the other games as well. It's easiest to do if you are playing on an emulator with save states. I also remember there being an extension you could install for an emulator that would actually allow you to see the RNGs. You can manipulate when playing on a console/handheld, but it's harder and can be time consuming.

Guys. Lets not turn this into a "I can break this game using this method!" pissing contest. Every game can be broken given enough effort, time, and technology due to the fallibility of human programming and foresight and the fact that most games only have one shot to 'get it right' whereas millions of players have for as long as they care to to break the game.

As suggested before by Jimmy, is that there are so many more options available to the common player compared to what the system is used to handling. Just like how in FFV you have so many options (i.e. Jobs) that there are far more opportunities for the player to find something that wasn't perfectly balanced or was made too effective for the time it is acquired. Whereas in cases like FFIV, where the game's progression and advancement is so ridged and static that developers can more effectively predict the given power level of a particular player's party at any given time and thus plan their events and challenges accordingly.

Both forms of play styles have their advantages as well as their disadvantages such as rigidness's lack of replayability (since your ultimate experience won't change without cheating) but has a better designed challenge curve (as well as allowing game designers to do things like take pages out of a Shonen anime/manga and create a situation where you cant use your most powerful/main character due to a dungeon's gimmick by weakening or disabling him and letting your side dudes take over for a dungeon power hour until the boss where things go pear-shaped due to lacking your big guns thus a sympathetic side character makes their noble last ditch effort to save the party from almost certain doom). While games that grant you more options naturally possess more replayability (maybe this time I'll take a party of Knights, Monks, a Bard, a Thief, a couple of various Mages, and a Hunter instead of a Samurai, a Chemist, two Summoners, and a Mime) but have the greater potential of unchecked exploits (like chucking purchasable/disposable rods at enemies for 15x the damage output you're supposed to possess, as well as making it difficult for designers to craft believable situations where an early unwinnable boss fight is easily revealed to be unwinnable as you've long since exceeded the highest possible amount of HP anything could have at that point in time as you've been chucking rods at it constantly for far more damage output than what should be currently available).

The problem with Awakening is that it made the classic mistake of throwing everything short of the kitchen sink (and to be fair, the capture/dismount mechanics) into the game. And while the systems don't clash with each other like Sword of Mana's system clusterfuck did (didn't help that the core game was based on an OG Gameboy game), you still have excess options like class changing (although not nearly as bad as the DS games where your designated Knight makes for an awesome Hunter since his base Def is solid for early game and he wont miss the Def growth as a Knight since his personal Def growth sucks too much for anything, but it does open up infinite grinding options and less personalized skill sets/functions), the eugenics (although not as bad as GotHW where you had potential fathers who were practically useless as fathers or even detrimental given combinations as siring a Mage with 20% Mag growth as well as characters who were simply deadweight in terms of parentage), and the random items ("Hel~lo Prologue 2 Ephraim's Lance!").

And then there's the DLC which is a veritable fire hose of content and options that can open up options that far exceed anything available in the main game (including content that far surpasses the difficulty available in the main game or the base game's post game).

Ultimately though, this is what happens when you make a game for fans of the series first and foremost. Despite that fact though, for what it is, it is a spectacular game (again, for what it is).